Azerbaijan will help Russia to bring gas to Europe - EXCLUSIVE

Now for Russia it became more difficult to run its gas business in EU. Beside political problems with Ukraine, the US is actively entering the European gas market. In this situation, Gazprom began to revive what had worked before, but then it became not relevant and was pushed to the background. "

This was told Eurasia Diary by the president of the Ukrainian Analytical Center Alexander Okhrimenko, commenting on the fact that Gazprom's Board of Directors approved the opening of the representative office of PAO “Gazprom” in Azerbaijan.

According to him, the opening of the representation of "Gazprom" in Azerbaijan is actually an attempt to local market.

"If the Azerbaijani authorities successfully use the change in the policy of Gazprom, they can even win on this. Now they have an opportunity to deal with Gazprom on their own terms. And, most likely, Gazrpom will accept this deal.

As is known the EU began to build a "Southern Gas Corridor" with a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters. gas, which will supply Azerbaijani gas to the south of Europe. In this case, Azerbaijani gas will compete with Algerian and American gas. Competition is growing.

Therefore, in this situation, the return of Gazprom to the gas market of Azerbaijan is an opportunity to benefit from a new direction of gas supply to Europe. The main goal, once again, is to beat the US in the EU market and, if possible, to shed its dependency on Ukrainian gas transportation system for political reasons, "Okhrimenko said.

Ukrainian expert thinks that it’s bad news for Ukraine, since all these southern and northern gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine may lead that, in general, no one will be needed the Ukrainian gas transportation system.

"In this situation, Gazprom is really trying to establish a gas supply to Azerbaijan so that after the launch of the Southern Gas Corridor, not only Azerbaijani gas, but also Russian gas will be supplied to the south of the EU," Okhrimenko concluded.

It should be reminded that Gazprom supplied gas to Azerbaijan from 2000 to 2006. Then supplies were stopped in connection with the launch of the Shah Deniz field.

Since 2010, Azerbaijan has started gas deliveries to Russia - this gas was used to supply gas to Dagestan. In 2013 and 2014, Azerbaijani gas supplies to Russia were repeatedly interrupted in connection with repair work. In 2015, no deliveries were made. In 2015, there were attempts to adjust the supply of Russian gas to the Azerbaijan Methanol Plant (AzMeCo). Negotiations on the supply of Russian gas to the republic are also being conducted with the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).